Over the past fifteen years, the use of e-mail has experienced tremendous growth. People regularly send and receive e-mails at all times of the day from work, from home, and even from e-mail enabled mobile devices. Indeed, for many people, e-mail has become a primary means of communication.
While e-mail is a great technology and has enhanced communication in our society, it does not come without cost. As an example, e-mail users spend significant amounts of time reviewing and replying to the numerous e-mails that they receive daily. This task has been made more cumbersome and time consuming by the large quantities of junk e-mail, or SPAM, which continuously flow into e-mail in-boxes. E-mail users must sort through all of the SPAM in order to get to the e-mail that they desire to see.
Applicant has recognized that there is a need in the art for systems and methods for automatically sorting e-mail so that a user can more quickly access the e-mails that he or she wishes to review. More specifically, Applicant has recognized the need in the art for systems and methods that automatically sort e-mail into classifications based upon whether the e-mail is from a personal contact, i.e. someone that that the user knows, whether the e-mail is from a commercial vendor from whom the user has indicated that he or she wishes to accept commercial e-mail, or whether the e-mail is from an unknown source. A system with these features would allow users to disregard junk e-mail and go directly to the e-mail in which he or she is interested.